Hey guys. I was just trying to create a mentalray car paint material applied to a sphere, and I wanted the sphere to reflect an environment ( no using ILB Or Dome) so I tried to connect a texture file to the surface shader of the Car Paint SG.. so far so good.. but when I try to render it crashes automaticaly.. I'm just wondering why is this? some bug? maya out of memory? is there a way to achieve this procedure without applying the texture to the surface shader?
I just wanted to test which method gives me better reflections, an IBL, a texture mapped into an sphere, or applying the texture to the environment slot of the shader.
any thoughts?

JohnPetrucci

08 August 2009, 05:06 AM

anyone? =(

I tried creating two domes, one with lambert shader white color, this will be casting even light in the scene (using FG) then I have another dome where I map my reflections, it will be used only to cast reflection on the object, (No FG).. But I doesnt' work because the Domes block one another...
sigh...

anevsky

08 August 2009, 08:52 PM

in your first post - i don't understand exactly what you are trying to do. So it's difficult to try and help...

For your second post - in order to seperate what casts final gather and what casts reflections you need to use a mip_rayswitch utility or another rayswitch utility.

I can post a dome with the right connections to only cast reflections if you want.

General comment: try to read your own posts as if you are a stranger and see if they make sense.

JohnPetrucci

08 August 2009, 10:24 PM

hmm I don't know how to use those mental ray nodes, there's little documentation about them. I know it sounds confusing, I wasn't clear. I created a polygon sphere with a car paint shader applied to it. I wanted to add a texture to the environment shader slot of the Car paint SG just for reflections. but when I render it crashes so I opt for another method, a dome.
can you post that scene ? maybe I can study it and see how it works
I'd appreciate it!

JohnPetrucci

08 August 2009, 04:26 AM

ok So I think I got it to work thanks to your advice. I applied rayswitch to the Dome, and I maped the reflection and Final gather maps into their respective slot and it seems to work fine!
yay!!

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